


Solving For X

by echoist



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally stunted man-children, M/M, Nightmares, Overthinking, Slight Tattoo Fetish, Unnecessary Complications
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 17:53:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoist/pseuds/echoist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>No matter what opinion Doctor Gottlieb had proclaimed concerning his tattoos on numerous occasions, Newt knew the score. He'd glimpsed a heady rush of somewhat mortified appreciation, just an old memory surfacing in the Drift from the first time Newt rolled up his sleeves in the lab. He could still feel it like a taut string in Hermann's mind, in the same way he knew his lab partner was too surly to ever admit it. It was all tangled up with his impression of the way Newt approached the world, a precisely calibrated instrument in one hand and a nail-bat in the other. Newt had to smile at the way Hermann saw him, a churlish adolescent and a half-mad genius all wrapped up in a hurricane.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>...or, sometimes even the sharpest minds in the PPDC can be excused for a being a bit dense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solving For X

 

Newt's feet sink down unpleasantly into the soft ground, faintly wet and sticky. He walks, _steady, steady,_ through a landscape of aching, nerve-shot pinks and blue/orange/blue light flickering like a dying flame. He holds one hand up over his eyes to peer ahead, but the view never changes. Spikes of bone stick up through the spongy mass at odd intervals, some cracked and weathered, others sharply breaching the surface mere inches from where he stands. He knows where he is; he doesn't know where he is. The panorama of splintered bone and unstable ground feels like a landscape out of a novel ( _don't think about it, now you're thinking about it, forget about the off-kilter pulse you can feel in the back of your skull)._ It's real enough to touch, real enough to singe his fingers on the bright blue trails of viscous fluid leaking down the sides of the osseous pillars.

His skin feels flushed, his hair damp with sweat or condensation and he constantly shoves it out of his eyes. Newt notices, belatedly, that he's not wearing his glasses, and his mind turns over the puzzle of how he can see at all. _Dream logic_ , he thinks, clinging to the words as if he could just hold on hard enough, they might actually be true. The ground, if you could call it that, begins to quiver and shake beneath him, a low rumbling sound echoing forth from every direction at once and he nearly loses his footing. _Shit._ Newt wonders why he even bothers to curse in English when German is so much more effective. He can't suss out the source of the abrasive sound, or the undulating motion beneath his feat, but he's certain it doesn't bode well. Not for the first time, Newt wonders what he's doing here, why he can't seem to cease this endless march across an obviously dying world. His throat tastes like chalk dust, and he can't remember his last meal.

Abruptly, his steps carry him to the end of the scarred integument and Newt stares down over the lumpy rim. A vast, bioluminescent pool stretches out to the horizon, the bleeding sun casting an eerie reflection across the ripples and shifts. Cyclopean pods drift lazily back and forth, most beneath the surface of the lake, but a few more ambitious sacs squirm and press insistently above the water line. He can see movement beneath a thin green sheath of membranous tissue, as if something were trying to breach the skin and shudder its way out into the open.

Newt fumbles several steps back, his brain warning him that this cannot possible end well. The sponge-like growth beneath his feet quivers and shifts, and he flings out his arms, clawing frantically for a foothold on an unstable element. It's useless, his hands and feet plunging into the soft tissue and sliding down the incline, lodging thick gouts of bleeding tissue beneath his fingernails. His feet (suddenly bare, he notes in confusion) slip into the edge of the blue-green fluid, and he feels a mild electrical current traveling up his legs and lodging in his lower spine.

The closest pod, large and thrumming with an unholy chorus of alternating heartbeats looms over him. His mind reels with incoherent panic, abandoning English to shouts his terror in German and borrowed Japanese. If Mako were here, she could correct his broken grammar while saving his worthless ass. What good was it to be a genius when he couldn't even think his way out of a gelatinous pit of budding horror? Two sets of frighteningly large claws curve against the membranous sheath, stretching and tearing until they work their way free. The beast within twists itself into shapes Newt's mind can't quite reconcile as it struggles, like all things, to be born.

Newt tears his vision away from the contorted sight, a migraine already looming behind his eyes as the sky above undulates with a churlish mass of shadows. _This isn't right_ , he thinks, trying to force down a most inopportune panic as the weakened birthing sac gives way. A horrible squelching sound freezes him where he stands, and Newt makes the inevitable mistake of slowly turning back. Orpheus at the edge of the underworld; Ado fleeing Sodom. The wrath of childish, jealous gods for simple curiosity, and wasn't that just science in a nutshell? _You've always wanted to know_ , a traitorous voice slithers through his fragmented thoughts. Well here's your chance, man; make the most of it before you're dinner.

Four massive appendages break through the pod, the tissue deflating to show the muscular outline of the creature within. A long, narrow head follows, catching the membrane in triple rows of teeth and devouring it whole. Newton abruptly feels sick to his stomach and curls into a ball, vomiting an acidic rush of bile into the pool.

He breathes heavily through his nose, every instinct telling him to keep his head down; for god's sakes, don't look _up_ , but he's a scientist before he's a man and his neck slowly swivels around to face the newborn terror. Six eyes line the sides of its face, dual rows of membranes sliding up and side to side. A row of serrated spikes surmounts its skull, just in case Newt hadn't cottoned on to the fact that it meant business. The sharpened bone protrusions continue down its back, broad and wickedly angled, clearly designed to shred and stick in the flesh of its enemies. It whines, an incomplete growl stuck in its throat, while all six eyes freeze Newt in place like an insect pinned to a board. A tail emerges from the muck and mire, shaking itself clean of the clinging ooze. It brandishes the heavy bone appendage through the air, scales gracing the tip like weathered shards of sea glass.

 _This is it_ , Newt thinks through the cacophony of rising terror scraping raw the insides of his skull. His life's work, all those years of bucking the system at one research institution after another, and this is what it comes down to in the end. He's never been much of a believer in anything he couldn't take apart and decipher, kaiju included, but for one single, searing instant Newt wishes he had hedged his bets.

Too late, he tries lifting his feet, but they've sunk down into the gelatinous underbelly of the pool and he's paralyzed, shaking feverishly in place. Newt looks up at the spreading darkness sinking lower with each passing second, and watches a flash of crimson lightning arc across the sky. Some part of his brain still insists on taking careful notes, and he wishes for the ease of the pocket recorder sitting uselessly on his desk. At least then, Hermann would know that he'd tried.

The infant kaiju finds it footing at last and lets out a deafening roar, rearing up on its hind legs and pounding back down, the resulting wave of bright blue sludge washing over Newt like an aberrant baptism. It stains his lips and catches in his throat, tasting like expired milk and the sickeningly sweet rock candy he used to steal from the corner store as a child. A new shadow passes over him with a great beating of wings, all improbable angles and a sonar-like shockwave that pulses below the audible human spectrum. It rattles across Newt's teeth again and again, until a slick, warm substance burns its way down his earlobes and drips onto his neck.

Newt knows deep in his gut that the gargantuan beast circling around for another pass sees him and worse, recognizes him. The man with the bleeding eyes who only grew more obstinate in the face of failure, one of a reckless pair among millions who had dared to take that final step and see farther than their fellows could ever dream. He wished Hermann were here now to witness this; he wished Hermann safe in his tidy quarters, enjoying a well-deserved rest.

Newt's stomach quivers and drops out beneath him, lodging somewhere past his knees. The airborne behemoth lets out a shriek of dominion and parts the air above Newt's skull with a fearsome rush, leaving a foul and rotting scent in its wake. It watches the newborn hellion approach its first meal, encouraging it with low rumbles and oddly musical trills. It was a shame he'd never get such valuable information back to his partner in ~~crime~~ science; even stodgy, disaffected Hermann couldn't resist a primary source.

Newt closes his eyes and bows his head, resigned to his fate. He supposes, somewhere in the deepest, most private part of his mind, that he probably deserves to go out this way. Up close and personal with his primal fear and greatest fascination, the best and worst he ever could have hoped for. Even now, he still thinks they're beautiful.

As the infantile beast lumbers toward him, a nagging thought tugs at the back of Newton's brain, needling his hippocampus with sharp insistence. Hadn't Gipsy Danger fallen into the breach, overloading its Arc-9 nuclear reactor and blowing anything in its path back to their component particles? Hadn't that same breach collapsed thanks to his audacious and inimitable Drift into the kaiju hive mind? (And all right, he conceded, credit where credit was due – Hermann had helped.)

If both hypotheses were true, then how could he be trapped in the Anteverse, facing down two hideous, hungry, and morbidly fascinating entities? Time seems to slow as Newt ponders the question, the infantile beast stumbling sluggishly forward only to meet a wall of iterating functions curling about its legs in a familiar fractional spiral. Newt blinks, uncertain as to how the numbers acquired visible form and substance, coating the surface of the pool with a fine layer of chalk dust.

The kaiju snaps its jaws with stymied hunger, frustrated by its current predicament. Knowing the Elder is near, it sets up a wail that ricochets off the pool and surrounding pods, throbbing against Newt's already blown eardrums like a siren. Even in the midst of the chaos, he feels his brain scrambling to christen it with a name and coming up empty. Tendo had always been quicker on the draw with that sort of thing, and Newt was definitely running out of time. The kaiju writhes, twisting its body into impossible positions in order to break free of its unconventional shackles with a resounding crack. Shackles that Newt couldn't explain, unless – but no, that was absurd, and utterly inconceivable. It was a good word, that, and Newton filed it away in a corner of his nearly liquified brain. If he survived this, and even _he_ had to admit that his chances were nearing zero and lowering exponentially with every heartbeat, he'd make certain to use it more often. Preferably where it could annoy Dr. Gottlieb.

Meanwhile, the newly hatched kaiju, wasted little time stalking its prey. Newt turns away, suddenly unwilling to look his impending death in the face, and instead of the slippery bank he tumbled down, he sees an improbable line of complex square roots and cardinalities marching up the flesh-colored slope. They seem to form a ladder, or at the very least a series of immanently reachable footholds and he reaches out for them without thinking. A old saying flashes through his mind, something about eliminating the impossible and he claws his way up through a series of equations he knows he could puzzle out if only he weren't fleeing for his life.

Newt can feel the creature's breath rushing cold against his neck, smell the foul air emanating from its gaping jaws as it expels great slicks of luminous blue saliva to slow him down. He hears it open its mouth with a shuddering creak and Newton squeezes his eyes shut, throwing his arms out blindly to reach the next flickering grip when he feels the first sharp bite of pain -

 

… in his left hip? Newt's vision swam before him, the nightmarish landscape dissolving into a familiar face hovering mere inches above his own. 'Newton? Hermann repeated, over and over, his hands clasping the side of Newt's face hard enough to leave bruises. Newton heaved out a shuddering breath and attempted to sit up in a mad state of confusion, only to find his body hopelessly tangled in his threadbare sheet. It took three tries to free himself, his hands shaking so badly he could barely grip the thin material until Herman sat back, his face absent its usual scowl and pulled the sweat-soaked material away. Newt pulled his knees up to his chest, pressing his back against the wall and rocked back and forth, trying to convince himself that they won. Twelve years gone by stained by blood and death and wreckage, but the war was finally over. They had _won._

Herman's eyes filtered through the spectrum and adjusted to the darkness just as Newton's vision resolved, aided by the thin line of light slipping under the door. Newt forced his eyes to focus in the dim light, taking in the figure perched on his bunk, hands gripping the sheet and twisting it into knots between his slender, bony fingers. Hermann's legs hung off the bed, khakis neatly pressed, the oxfords still on his feet polished to a high gleam. Not a strand of slicked down hair was out of place. The only imperfection visible in his standard uniform was a mismatched series of buttons on his rumpled white shirt, as though he'd fastened them in a hurry.

'Christ on a slice of toast, dude, could you be more British?' Newt blurted out, wide-eyed and shaking before biting down sharply enough on his tongue to taste the nauseating tang of blood. 'I mean, goddammit, that's not what I – fucking _hell_ , man,' he muttered, covering his face with one hand. 'You scared the shit out of me, but that was still really -'

'Rude?' Hermann answered, one eyebrow raised. 'Uncalled for?' Newt nodded, peering out from between his fingers in obvious embarrassment. 'Trust me, Dr. Geiszler, at this point in our working relationship, I consider myself immune to your inappropriate outbursts.'

'Newt,' he corrected out of habit, swallowing hard and trying to control the tremor in his hands. 'After that little stunt you pulled, the least you can do is call me by my first name.' Hermann placed a hesitant hand on Newton's shoulder, the other sliding gently across his shaking hands and Newt began to feel his tremors subside.

'I'm certain I don't know what you're talking about,' Hermann evaded the issue, turning his head to gaze at the collection of kaiju memorabilia tacked across every available surface in the small room. He knew it all by heart, of course, but it still seemed easier than looking his co-worker in the face. He knew he'd trespassed without asking, but the dire images flickering through his mind and interrupting his calculations had seemed like a valid enough reason to breach their standard rules of contact.

Newton heaved out a shuddering sigh, making a disgruntled clicking sound before reaching out to rearrange the buttons on Hermann's wrinkled shirt, much to the doctor's obvious agitation. 'Stop that,' he said firmly, forcing Newton's hands away. 'You're only making them worse.' Hermann moved to retrieve the man's glasses from a low shelf near the single bunk and handed them over. He watched Newton fumble them with shaking hands, dropping them to the floor twice before accidentally sending them skidding beneath under the bed.

Hermann gave in with a muttered curse and switched on a dim lamp before retrieving them, a spark of pain shooting through his left leg as he knelt to peer under the bed frame. He collapsed back on the bed with a grimace and settled them gently on the bridge of Newton's nose, who blinked in surprise and pushed them back a smidge out of habit. His eyes widened at the sudden clarity, and if he rubbed absently at his left leg, well, that was nothing new.

Newt shook his head once more to clear it and started back in determinedly on Hermann's buttons, cursing when his fingers refused to cooperate. Hermann patiently removed Newt's quivering hands from the fabric once more and pushed him gently back until he collapsed against an upright pillow, his head momentarily plunging into his hands. Hermann fixed the remaining off-kilter buttons in silence, feeling the aftershocks of a tremulous fear radiating from Newton's cold and clammy skin. It only took the slightest brush of his mind against Newton's to witness the entirety of the nightmare he'd glimpsed from his quarters across the hall, and he recoiled from the images filling his brain.

It was even worse than Hermann had thought.

Newt looked up at the homage to his favorite subject adorning his walls and shuddered involuntarily at the remnants of the dream scraping along the edge of his consciousness. Hermann could feel him considering taking them down, one by one, but would that accomplish? He'd still see them every time he closed his eyes, and if Newton thought any other line of work awaited him after his tenure with the PPDC, he was sorely mistaken. Some callings were for life, no matter the side effects. A few bad dreams were only to be expected.

'What time is it?' Newt murmured, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead to rub at his bloodshot eyes.

'Around 23:00 hours,' Herman answered, staring down at the tips of his shoes. 'The entire base is either _still_ celebrating, or sleeping off the ill effects thereof. You clearly needed the rest, but – ' He shifted his focus down to his hands, pulling at a stubborn thread in the lining of his shirt. It refused to give, and he glanced up briefly at Newt before sliding his eyes away.

'Yeah,' Newt returned dimly, his eyes unconsciously roving from side to side as if he expected the known world to crumble around him at any moment. 'You could say that again.'

He ran a shaking hand through his hair, leaving it standing up in a mess of damp spikes that Hermann itched to tame. 'Wait,' Newt asked, peering up at Hermann as if sliding the last piece of a puzzle into place. 'Were you there, too? I thought I saw –' He cuts himself off sharply, glancing down at his hands where they gripped the edges of the mattress. ''No, y'know what, forget it. It's stupid.'

'I wasn't precisely dreaming, no,' Hermann hedged, trying to find the words to accurately describe the crimson and black lightning Newton’s subconscious hallucinations had sent crashing through his brain. 'I simply felt that you were – that you might perhaps want company.' A slow flush crept up Hermann's neck to color his cheeks, and one corner of Newt's mouth curled up in an answering smile.

'You were worried about me,' he mused, stretching out his legs to poke fondly at Hermann's spotless khakis. 'C'mon man, relax, it's got to be better for your leg.' Hermann obliged and shuffled back on the mattress until he could rest his back against the wall, his left leg extending out in front of him. He seemed to have left his cane behind, but Newt rationalized that it was only about three steps between his room and Hermann's anyway. It didn't mean anything.

'That's...kind of nice, you know?' Newt posited, glancing over at his lab partner and leaning briefly against his shoulder. In retrospect, it seemed ridiculous to simply think of Hermann merely as a co-worker, a persistent aggravation in his daily routine. Not since the Drift had torn both their minds wide open and left them to pick up the shattered pieces. 'I can't even think of the last time someone asked me if I was ok and didn't actually mean completely fucked in the head. Which I am,' Newt continued with an unusual dose of self-deprecating humor. 'Don't think I don't know that, but – really,' he trailed off, suddenly acutely embarrassed. 'Thanks, man.'

'You're not -' Hermann protested, his fingers twisting in his lap. 'There's nothing fundamentally wrong with your brain, Newton. In fact, were inclined to be charitable, I'd have to say that you're one of the sharpest minds I've ever worked with.'

Newt gaped up at him, knowing he should close his mouth but powerless to do so. 'You're just now figuring that out?' he asked coyly to cover his surprise, scratching the back of his head.

'No,' Hermann argued, the familiar tang of bitterness underlying his tone. 'It's your methods I've always disagreed with. You embark on the most ridiculous projects I've ever had the misfortune to witness without sparing a single thought for the consequences.' He stopped to take in a breath, and started in again before Newt could interrupt him. 'You take dangerous shortcuts and absolutely unnecessary risks and then have the nerve to claim that it's all in the name of _science_. For God's sake, Newton, I was the one who had to pick you up off the floor after you plugged yourself into that blasted brain fragment.'

'Yeah, and if I hadn't, this whole city might be underwater right now,' Newt shot back, anger and disbelief lending a sharp red edge to his words that Hermann felt sting just behind his eyes. 'Sorry to inconvenience you, pal.'

'Inconvenience -' Hermann stopped, his cheeks reddening. 'You had a seizure!' he exclaimed, a vivid flash of memory sparking across his mind. Newt felt a stab of pain in his frontal cortex and suddenly saw the scene through Hermann's eyes, feeling the helpless, scrabbling terror as he cast aside his cane and knelt on the floor beside Newt's convulsing body. Hermann pulled off the cap, disconnecting the wires and supported Newton in his arms like a child, ignoring the pain twisting through his hip like a blade.

'Yeah, ok, maybe,' Newt answered slowly, blinking his eyes to clear away the disturbing image. A paralyzing fear remained in its wake, all bundled together with nausea and something undeniably _other_. Something fragile; a wary, fluttering thing that lived in a puzzle box behind Hermann's ribs. 'But it was worth it, dude,' Newt asserted with a barely suppressed shudder of displaced anxiety. 'You can't look around this place and tell me it wasn't.'

Hermann shook his head fiercely. 'And if it had _killed_ you?' he asked, mere inches from Newton's face. Newton stared at his mouth, for once rendered speechless. 'You should have waited for me. You could at least have toldme what you were up to instead of leaving me to – to find you like that.' Hermann fixed his gaze across the room, staring at a gargantuan poster of Scissure's anatomy without reading the lines of statistics marching across it.

'I left you a recording,' Newt protested. 'Besides, you would have just told me not to do it.'

'That is _not_ the point and you damn well know it,' Hermann returned, turning back as if drawn by a magnetic pulse. His voice had gone raspy with barely contained fury, and Newton drew back slightly in self defense. Hermann's hands landed on Newton's shoulders and shook him ungently, as if to rid him of his reckless stupidity like so much spare change from a vending machine. 'When have you ever taken my advice, Newton? Name one time.'

Newt racked his brain, but the only thing he could come up with was the shared Drift in the Bone Slums nearly twenty-four hours earlier. Their desperate, last ditch effort to decode the persistent riddle, to solve the unsolvable at last, before it was too late. He'd been prepared to go it solo at all costs, even if it left him blind or liquified his brains, but Hermann had stepped up. Hermann had refused to let him make that terrifying journey alone, and Newt had been more grateful in that instant than he knew he'd ever manage to explain.

'You see?' Hermann asked, even though Newt was certain he hadn't spoken aloud. 'I was with you then, as I would have been in the lab, had you only trusted me enough to ask.'

'I do trust you,' Newt murmured, and he felt the truth of it curl around his chest, down beneath the hollows of his bones. The knowledge shocked him, rocketing through his nerves like his curious fingers exploring a light socket when he was five years old. He trusted Hermann Gottlieb more than anyone else in the program; probably more than anyone else he'd ever known. _Funny_ , Newt thought to himself, how a thing like that could sneak up on a guy.

Hermann shifted uncomfortably beside him on the bed, and Newt wondered just how much of his gut realization would transfer over. Their Drift into uncharted territory had been unorthodox at best, and extremely foolhardy at its worst. He still couldn't be sure just how long this strange mix of garbled sensations and stray, wandering thoughts might last. They were the first to ever try it, and now that the Breach had been destroyed, they were also the last who would ever know what it felt like. Newt tried not to regret it, but he just wasn't built to let go, even when the entire world was at stake. The vibrantly colored designs etched into his skin proved the truth of that.

Newt could faintly remember fragments of the party shaking the walls of the Shatterdome this morning, welcoming home the two surviving heroes of the war effort who understandably just wanted to be left the hell alone. He also remembered the atmosphere crashing like a deflated balloon soon after, the entire PPDC trying to drink away the pain that accompanied crushing loss like an unwanted pet. He'd bailed after only a few drinks, the noise and the crowd too much for his overloaded and potentially damaged neural circuitry. Not very rock star, he knew, but no one had time for a borderline insane K-Science tech anyway, what with the entire shape of the world having changed. Once the seething pulse in his extra-crispy gray matter had reached an unsustainable level, he'd tried to slip unnoticed into the warren of underground quarters. He would have signed over a government grant for a few blissful moments of silence.

Hermann had been waiting for him along the back wall, standing uncomfortably with a thoroughly bewildered expression. Newt didn't question how he knew the doctor was waiting for _him_ instead of making as close an attempt to normal socializing as he'd ever get; it was just there, in his head, along with an awful lot of other things. Hermann's eyes had lit up when he'd spied Newton headed his way, and shut down again just as quickly, downing the bitter drink in his hand with a grimace. He'd fallen into place beside Hermann at first, their shoulders barely touching as neither ventured to speak. Carrying on a conversation over the roaring press of sound was a doomed venture from the start anyway.

They'd both agreed through gestures and hesitant, unspoken communication that they were owed a much deserved rest, far away from the paradoxical mix of convivial celebration and somber remembrance. The press of unwanted bodies crowded in on them with increasing frequency, and Hermann's bad leg was actually shaking from the strain. Holed up in their quarters, they would be well insulated from the persistent bass and zealous shouts of victory shaking the walls across the base.

Newton could barely hold himself up after the electric thrill of adrenaline had abandoned him, and he wasn't nearly ready to begin packing away his years of suddenly irrelevant research into mountains of cardboard boxes. The future, he decided, could damn well wait, and Hermann agreed wholeheartedly without ever uttering a sound.

The two of them had meandered through the labyrinthine corridors and stood awkwardly about the hallway for a few moments, all shuffling feet and nervous fingers, before Herman had turned away with a muttered 'Well, then.' Newt had managed a quiet 'See you when I see you,' in response, about thirty seconds _after_ the door had swung shut in his face. It seemed as though all the things they had to talk about, the things Newt thought they really _should_ talk about, just weren't on the table anymore.

'So much for that,' he'd muttered with a sharp tilt of his head, as if Hermann were still listening. 'I mean, I don't know about you, but it's not every day I get to tap in to an alien consciousness and save the world. But you're right,' he added, disappointment turning caustic in his throat. 'Let's not talk about it. Let's just forget it ever happened.' It took him three or four fumbling tries, but Newt eventually levered the door open and sprawled across his bunk.

 

Now, painfully awake after hours of wasted sleep, Newt noted Hermann's gaze flicker down to the vibrant artwork crawling across his chest and arms, cutting back up sharply to the wall over his bunk with a hitch in his throat. He'd forgotten he wasn't wearing a shirt. Well, Hermann was just going to have to deal with his rockin' bod, because Newt was still feverishly warm, drenched in sweat, and digging about in his drawers for respectable clothing ranked absolutely zero on his list of priorities.

Besides, no matter what _Doctor Gottlieb_ had proclaimed on numerous occasions, Newt knew better. He'd glimpsed a heady rush of somewhat mortified appreciation, an old memory surfacing in the Drift from the first time Newt rolled up his sleeves in the lab. He could still feel it like a taut string in Hermann's mind, in the same way he knew his partner was too surly to ever admit it. It was all tangled up with his impression of the way Newt approached the world, a precisely calibrated instrument in one hand and a nail-bat in the other. Newt had to smile at the way Hermann saw him, a churlish adolescent and a half-mad genius all wrapped up in a hurricane.

He knew what everyone else in the PPDC thought about the intricate patterns on his skin, and from day one, Newt had steadfastly refused to give a shit. He was luminary in his field, an honest to god rock star and the only one crazy enough to still be here. It had been _his_ idea, _his_ machine cobbled together from junk and spare parts that finally allowed them to meet the kaiju on their own turf, and it was solidly because of him that the Breach was closed.

Newt sensed a spark of grainy purple irritation drifting across Hermann's thoughts, rather like someone had left a door in their minds wedged open with a shoe, and Newt hastily amended his own thoughts. _They_ were rock stars, the both of them, wearing the scars in their goddamn eyeballs to prove it. What anyone else knew, or thought they knew about the K-Science division was utterly immaterial in the wake of their achievement. He and Hermann would always know how it really went down, and crossing his arms firmly over his chest, Newt decided that was enough.

'What do you think you'll do now?' Hermann asked, clearing his throat after a long, uncomfortable moment. He glancing down once more at Newt's colorful sleeve and hesitantly reached out to trace the shape of Onibaba along his right forearm.

Newt knew precisely what he wasn't saying; what was he going to do with his life now that his entire specialization had been retired? 'I dunno, man,' Newt answered with a shrug, slightly preoccupied by the sensation of Hermann's fingers moving across his skin. 'I honestly hadn't given it much thought yet. Too caught up in the whole 'we saved the world' experience to think too hard about the future.'

'I'm sure your work with kaiju anatomy could have other useful applications,' Hermann offered, and Newt could tell he was just trying to make conversation. He didn't want to wander back across the hall any more than Newt wanted him to leave, and a slow, spreading warmth began to curl up through his ribs. 'Biomedical research, or neural connectivity,' Hermann continued, hopefully oblivious. 'You never know, you might be able to synthesize any number of useful pharmaceuticals from your remaining specimens, now that the clock isn't hanging over our heads.'

'Or I could take over the black market, now that Chau's out of the way,' Newt suggested, only half serious. Hermann shoved him lightly on the shoulder, and Newt lifted up his hands in a full body shrug. 'What? Kaiju bone powder was already going for 500 big ones a pound. Without a reliable source, you know how much I could get away with charging for that crap? Hell, when I run out of organs to grind, I could probably just clone some more.' Newton's face turned thoughtful and he stroked his chin. 'Maybe get a pair of those gold-tipped shoes to match my new image,' he joked.

'You are wholly incorrigible,' Hermann replied, shaking his head.

'C'monnn,' Newt bantered, shoving Hermann right back. 'You know me. Did you really expect anything less?' He felt something cold slither down Hermann's spine and sat back, turning to face him on the bunk. 'You do know I'm not actually serious, right?'

'Sometimes, Newton, I find it rather difficult to tell,' Hermann answered, his lips pressed in a thin line.

'At least give me one last joke,' Newton pleads, exasperated. 'Y'know, since you can just rummage around in my head whenever you want now. I suppose you're just happy I'm never gonna be able to put one over on you again. Man,' he muttered wistfully. 'Those were good times.'

'First of all,' Hermann asserted, poking his index finger in Newt's face. 'I'd never just 'go rummaging about' in your head on a whim, and I'd appreciate it if you'd grant me the same courtesy.' Newt held up his hands in surrender. 'Scout's honor,' he answered, despite never having been a boy scout.

'Secondly,' Hermann continued, stumbling a bit over his next words. 'Well, it isn't _all_ that bad, is it?' He held Newton's startled gaze for a moment in perfect stillness, neither of them breathing, before he glanced away. A sour disappointment drifted across their neural tether when it seemed no favorable answer would be forthcoming.

'I should let you get back to sleep,' Hermann murmured tersely, shifting as if to stand up from the bed. It hit Newton then, like the chime of a buzzer half a second too late. Hermann had just laid everything on the line with one simple question and he'd been too stunned – or just too chicken to answer.

'Or, you know, you could stay,' Newt threw out in a rush. 'Or whatever. If you wanted.' His voice shook only the tiniest bit over the words, and he congratulated himself on the feat. Newt couldn't even be certain what language he'd phrased them in, or if it mattered; since he'd woken up with Hermann hovering above him, they'd slipped past English and lapsed into German, their old standby for arguments. He was pretty sure at some point he'd fallen back on a smattering of the pidgin Cantonese that spread like a communicable disease around the engineers. The rest of it, Newt was certain, hadn't even been out loud.

Herman regarded him for a moment, clearly waiting to see if this was another joke at his expense. He reached out ever so slightly to touch the fringes of Newton's thoughts and discovered that he was, in fact, quite serious. A little nervous, to be sure, but the thoughts racing through his mind like a bullet train were devastatingly honest. What Newton had to be nervous about, Hermann couldn't fathom.

'It's just, I know I'm never going to get back to sleep, not -' he broke off, and Hermann heard the word _alleine_ echo through his mind. The fearless, blustering wunderkind was afraid to sleep alone. Who ever would have thought? Before their Drift, Hermann would have offered a snide response, perhaps told him to start packing up his half of the laboratory instead of wasting more time lazing about in his quarters. As matters stood, however, Hermann's bitterness and impatience stood by and sneered as he made a different call.

'I'm not asking you to –' Newton stammered. 'I mean, we don't have to - shit, I'm fucking this up, aren't I?' He curled in on himself, a miserable bundle of tense muscles twitching as he rubbed his fingers painfully across both bloodshot eyes.

'No,' Hermann answered, pressing a pale hand against Newton's vibrantly illustrated chest and gently pushing him down against the pillows. Newt complied without protest, his eyes never shifting from Hermann's face and leaving them both a bit surprised. The regulation bunks were small, but not prohibitively so, and Hermann slipped his feet out of his oxfords, lining them up neatly on the floor. He stood up, leaning heavily against the wall as he unbuckled his belt and carefully shucked off his pants, folding them into a neat square to rest atop his shoes. Even Hermann's modest boxers looked carefully pressed, Newt observed, feeling the wild thought career through his mind like a tumbleweed and tried to call it back without success. Hermann, thankfully, declined to comment.

It took him a moment's effort, but Hermann managed to settle onto the bed next to Newton with the room at his back, pulling the sheet and thin quilt over them both. He shifted onto his right side and paused, his hand hovering in midair before Newt grabbed it and tucked it around his waist. It was a gamble, and Newton knew it, but it sure as hell seemed like a shot worth taking.

After an interminable period of indecision, he shifted close against Herman's chest, resting his head just beneath Hermann's shoulder and sharing his warmth. He let out a deep, even breath as the tightness in his chest finally began to ease. 'Shirt's kind of scratchy,' he murmured, and a tiny hint of laughter slipped past Hermann's lips as Newton brashly raised the stakes.

'First you have to button me up,' Hermann complained lightly, 'and now you want -'

'I hate to break it to you,' Newton interrupted, rolling over and popping each button out from its eye. 'But I've been known to be a bit contrary from time to time.' Hermann scoffed at that, sitting up slightly and disentangling himself from the sleeves before tossing the shirt to the floor. It was already wrinkled, he thought, no need to bother with folding.

Stretched out side by side, Hermann's hand sliding gently over the intricate details of vanquished monsters across Newton's right arm, they almost seemed to slip into the Drift once more. Absent the towering, incomprehensible figures that had broken through their minds on their first attempt, it was oddly pleasant; a commingling of hazy, incomplete thoughts searching for their other half in answer. It was easy, Hermann thought, to let his mind expand and tangle lazily with Newton's, a feat he would have considered impossible only a few days before.

'It's not like this for the pilots, is it?' Newton asked quietly. Hermann shook his head, recalling all the logs and debriefs he'd read on the subject out of curiosity. Even the Kaidonovskys, who held the record for the longest synchronized neural handshake, reported the connection fading within a few hours of separation from their Jaeger. No, this was – something different, and Hermann theorized that it might operate under a different set of rules.

He focused experimentally on the nightmarish visions still bleeding over into the corners of Newton's mind, no matter how carefully he'd attempted to hide them. Tugging slightly at the unbearable images, unraveling them as they passed through the liminal space lingering where the Drift had left off, Hermann shut them away out of reach. With any luck, Newton wouldn't even notice they were gone. Newt's breathing began to even out with the early stages of sleep, and Hermann unconsciously matched the rhythm, hoping the remnants of the dream would fade from his mind like a story heard once, years ago, not even worth the telling.

'How did you –' Newton exhaled in mumbled relief, his hand sliding up Hermann's chest to rest in the hollow just above his collarbone, his breath warm against bare skin. 'I didn't know you could use this – whatever it is, like– '

'Neither did I,' Hermann admitted with a wry smile.

Newt looked up at him with an unreadable expression before breaking out into the sort of smile that usually squeezed the air straight out of Hermann's lungs. 'Whatever, dude,' Newton said with a disbelieving shake of his head. 'That was amazing.'

Hermann took a moment to be proud of his efforts without acknowledging Newton's gratitude aloud. Mere inches away in the dark, Hermann couldn't hide the tingling rush that rose to his cheeks as Newton's gratitude washed over him in a warm, billowing wave. He wondered at the newness of their comfort with one another, some small part of his mind trying to convince him that it wouldn't last; it couldn't. The aftereffects of the Drift would fade, and he'd be left with nothing but memories of the only time in his life he'd actually been understood – more than that, _accepted._ Appreciated.

Watching Newton's eyes begin to drift shut, Hermann's heart beat out a tattoo in the rhythm of a familiar longing. He'd always known better than to entertain the notion that Newton might share his perplexing jumble of desire and vexation. Anger, certainly, and mild aggravation at his constant presence, but never anything more. When he wasn't ignoring Hermann entirely, lost in singular focus on his alien objects of affection, Newton seemed to go out of his way to further their trivial and ineffectual rivalry.

A Gordian knot of inadvisable questions and uncertainty had tangled Hermann's synapses from the moment he'd first met the man, throwing a wrench in his carefully constructed barrier of aloof disregard. Newton Geiszler was brash and overzealous at the best of times, and downright certifiable at his worst. Despite Hermann's constant frustration, and against his better judgment, he'd recently come to admit that he enjoyed the verbal sparring. Never ending arguments over whose work was more important to the cause and snarling quips over the accuracy of their various hypotheses served, in the end, to keep them both focused and paced to win.

Now, huddled together beneath a pile of regulation blankets, Herman felt that snarl of confusion and need slip loose from its mooring, inertia sweeping it along a terrible vector. It barreled across the tenuous space between them before Hermann could intercept it, and Newton's breath caught in his throat, breaking the cypher at last.

Hermann buried his face into the pillow, thoroughly mortified. They were colleagues and co-workers, saddled with expectations of professionalism and excellence on demand. The ever ticking clock had left little time for anything beside hurriedly constructed models and a flurry of chalk dust perpetually choking the room, not to mention the statistically improbable number of kaiju parts 'accidentally' strewn about his side of the lab. Sometimes Hermann thought they argued just to be heard, to remind themselves that they didn't exist in a vacuum. Sometimes, it even worked.

Even pressed close in the small hours of the morning, Hermann still couldn't quite bring himself to break down that final wall. He'd built the foundations so long ago he could barely remember a time when they hadn't sprouted from his very bones, sealing him away from the taunting remarks of his fellows and the malignant loneliness that ached worse than his troublesome leg. Newton however, rare creature that he was, had never made even a passing remark about his shuffling walk, or his reliance upon a cane as if he were 80 years old instead of a well broken-in 36. Instead, he slowed his own pace to draw even with Hermann, kicking the occasional scrap of debris from his path, and always offering him the last chair in a crowded room as if it had never occurred to him to act otherwise.

Hermann certainly didn't trust his tongue to offer a proper explanation for his neural blunder, not after all their years of bickering and overstated resentment. Surprisingly, Newton didn't seem to expect one. He caught a flurry of images shuffling through Newton's mind, the vast majority humming with erotic possibility. He saw himself through Newton's eyes, pressed down against the mattress, his hands pinned over his head. He felt the ghost of a tongue exploring all the places his clothing wasn't, heard the echo of the metal headboard slam repeatedly against the wall. Hermann closed his eyes and let the visions wash over him, his tongue flicking out to wet his lower lip until abruptly, the images ceased. Slightly embarrassed, Newton tried to reel his fantasies back in while his mind struggled with the challenge of how to make Hermann moan his name without causing injury to his leg.

Oddly touched, Herman leaned forward until his forehead rested gently across Newton's wrinkled brow. Neither of them pulled away, breaths commingling in the companionable dark. 'We have time,' Hermann reminded him. 'I'm certain the two brightest minds in the K-Science Programme can solve that particular puzzle.'

'We're the _only_ two minds in the K-Science Programme,' Newton argued, and Hermann shushed him with a soft, nearly chaste kiss. It proved effective, and Hermann was rewarded with the sense of how it felt to be on the receiving end of the gesture, how Newton's lips wanted to part beneath his and let him in, if he'd only stay.

'We have time,' Herman repeated, still marveling at the realization. 'You're used to moving at the speed of sound,' he observed pointedly, and Newton shrugged in frustrated acknowledgment. 'Let me teach you how to be still.'

'I'm not sure I actually have that setting,' Newt protested, nudging at the side of Hermann's neck with his nose before sliding feverishly hot lips across the exposed skin. A surprised noise of appreciation escaped Hermann's mouth, and he took ruthless advantage of Newton's focus to flip him over onto his back.

'I imagine we'll be decommissioned tomorrow,' Hermann mused, watching Newton's warm brown irises shrink at the press of Hermann's lanky body against his. 'But I could fill a bookshelf with things I never got around to teaching you.' Newton choked slightly at the promise in those words. If he had intended the transmission of his own suggestive and half-formed ideas to shock and arouse, he had to concede that he had _nothing_ on Doctor Gottlieb.

'Tell me, Newton,' Hermann inquired. 'What areyou planning to do with all that spare time?'

'Whatever you tell me to do,' Newt replied shamelessly, mostly certain that the vow had made it past his lips.

'Good boy,' Hermann answered with a sly approval in his tone, dropping a fierce kiss on Newton's forehead. He slid down the expanse of bright, bare skin to lie wrapped around Newton one more, his right hip resting against the mattress to take the weight off his left side. He tangled their legs together comfortably, absurdly pleased at the idea of making Newton wait on something for once in his life. He refused to be a convenience in the wake of an apocalypse averted; no, now that he had identified the unknown variable, Hermann found that he had _very_ specific plans for Dr. Newton Geiszler. The anticipation would keep the both of them on edge for as long as he decided to let the equation linger, understood but unresolved. Sometimes the process proved more important to discovery than the end result, and Hermann knew by experience that Newton never tired of experimentation.

He wrapped skinny arms back around his constant companion, the thorn in his side at top volume for all these years, and wondered how they could have fooled themselves so entirely for so long. A tiny, secretive answer bridged the gap and wound itself around his neurons like silkworm floss before he could dislodge it, insisting that they could have wound up here at any time. Fortune, as Newton had often said, favored the brave.

Hermann quietly disagreed with his partner's assessment. The human mind, he allowed, was capable of seeming every bit as strange and alien to its host as anything rising up from within the Breach. It had taken the overwhelming power of a highly experimental (and potentially fatal) Drift to allow the two of them to see the world through another's eyes. Virgil may have been correct in his assessment of chance, yet Hermann knew from painful experience that often the boldest choice lay in rising above the fray, instead of jumping in headfirst.

Long after Hermann had dropped off into a peaceful sleep, Newton woke to the unfamiliar sensation of fingers entwined with his own and warm skin pressed companionably close. He stared in silence at the snapshots, sketches and diagrams of every known kaiju tacked edge to edge around the room, a history of his life in pictures, missing only one thing: himself. He considered taking them down and packing them away, an outdated course of study no longer necessary in the new world they had created. It seemed dangerously close to forgetting his own past, and in the end Newt decided against it, agreeing with a gentle nudge from Hermann's dreaming mind to leave them untouched. They were still his first love and greatest fear, and a powerful strength lay hidden in that duality.

Newt would always have the ink upon his skin as a reminder of the passion that led him to alter the entire course of the war, a living, breathing testament that even outcasts and traitors could save the world. As his eyes at last slid shut, the wall of familiar monsters stared back at him through the darkness as they always had, tempered by the solidity of Hermann's frame pressed close against him as if he never intended to let go. Just paper tigers, he thought, no longer a threat to him or anyone else. Merely a well-tended shrine to departed ghosts.


End file.
